


As iron sharpens iron

by middlemarch



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Greg Serrano - Freeform, Josh Chan - Freeform, Research, Tropes, soul-mate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 02:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11026611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Just because no one else had bothered to look it up, didn't mean Rebecca was wrong.





	As iron sharpens iron

“Honey, that’s not how it works,” Paula said definitively though she left her wrist facing upwards where the writing was, in a slanted Gothic script she’d always wondered about. She’d never seen anyone else with a soulmark like it and she’d resigned herself that her soulmate was never going to wander into West Covina, cosmic cul-de-sac four hours from the beach that it was. She was married happily enough and her children were healthy enough (and not in jail or on probation at the moment, score!) and she’d been able to let the screen stay on the San Dimas Law School site for enough seconds to see where she’s have to move the cursor to click on “Admissions.” What Rebecca proposed, as usual, was insanity.

“Why not? Why couldn’t I be your soulmate, Paula?” Rebecca insisted. She must have been like this all the friggin’ time in New York. Josh had the skin of a rhino to have passed by her in the street there and not picked up on it, but he wasn’t the sensitive one in his posse. That was Hector and he had the publications in local poetry journals to prove it.

“Because soulmarks don’t work like that. Soul-mates don’t work like that. I’m not your one true love, the Mork to your Mindy, the Melbourne to your Victoria,” Paula explained. Not wearily though, because arguing with Rebecca was never so much exhausting as exhilarating and invigorating and then she was pleasantly wrung out the way you were supposed to be after a Swedish massage. 

“Who says it has to be romantic? Romance is for the birds,” Rebecca declared, a trifle bitterly. Attaining Josh seemed impossible and the thing with Greg was one part sugar, two parts strychnine, and Rebecca had watched “Thelma and Louise” four times since Friday night. And it was Sunday brunch. In between, she admitted to episodes of Laverne and Shirley.

“Not with your soulmate, it isn’t,” Paula said.

“How would you know? Is Scott your soulmate?” Rebecca pounced.

“No, of course not! Do you think he could write even one of these letters?” Paula snapped, shoving her wrist in Rebecca’s face or the general vicinity of it. It was more in the zone of her upper cleavage but it was an emphatic gesture.

“No, but I know who can. Who did. Maybe you’ll believe me if I show you?” Rebecca asked, not waiting for a response, rifling around in the aptly named hobo handbag she’d brought along instead of her brief-case or the sort of twee wristlet Darryl had cooed over.

“Aha! I knew I had that volume!” Rebecca took out a spiral notebook, covered with puffy unicorn stickers and what looked like some totally scratched Scratch-And-Sniff hot dogs and cupcakes, flicked through some pages and set it down before Paula.

“See, look! It’s right there. The evidence doesn’t lie,” Rebecca said, gently now, like Paula was a startled colt. Or that might have been the image that popped into her head since the opposite page was filled with workman-like renderings of Black Stallion mid-canter. 

“The evidence” was a page of slanted Gothic scripted ramblings about a girl who fell in love with her horse Destiny, which exactly matched the pewter “Are you my assistant?” on Paula’s fair skin. True, it was clearly the same hand that had written Paula’s soul-mark, even Valencia could see that, or Weird Karen, but it didn’t make any sense.

“Does it have to?” Rebecca asked softly, indicating that Paula must have said that last part out loud. Whether or not they were soulmates, they were rubbing off on each other.

“I guess not. But I don’t get it,” Paula replied.

“Well, I’ve thought a lot about this and I did some research online and I requested some documents from Bulgaria and Montenegro because they have the most verified collection of books on the topic and I brushed up on my Medieval Latin, boy was I rusty, and I think we’ve got the soulmate thing all wrong. Or rather, we’ve Americanized it into romance-only. But friendship counts too, from everything I’ve read, and not to brag but I think I may now rival the Abelard Professor of Soul Theology at Berkeley in terms of how deep I go on this, friendship was actually the first relationship soulmarks were recognized in. So we’re the most authentic soulmates in West Covina, possible in SoCal,” Rebecca explained, flicking her hair as she finished, as she usually did when she knew she’d won the case.

“Okay, we’re soulmates then,” Paula agreed. “Scott will be pleased, I guess. He’s always been worried my soulmate would come along and sweep me off my feet.”

“I don’t sweep you off your feet? Paula! I kid, I kid. Can we go get a celebratory doughnut now? I need something to settle my stomach after all the boba I had this morning,” Rebecca said with a small grimace.

“I warned you about that,” Paula scolded.

“Yeah, you did. That’s why I need you,” Rebecca said, linking her arm through Paula’s. They didn’t skip but they could have.

**Author's Note:**

> Another love-song to Paula & Rebecca and their friendship, trying to use the soul-mark/soul-mate trope which I find sort of mystifying. The title is from the Bible and refers to how friends affect each other.


End file.
